Paulownia Archery Bows

Paulownia Archery Bows
Dan Albert | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 3 pgs | 2 mb

When we took possession of our humble London
home, I was shocked to find that all the window
treatments had been removed. So we suffered
the rat-in-a-maze Ikea gantlet to get a good price
on new Venetian blinds. I hung the new blinds
immediately but it took me months to get around
to tailoring them by removing the extra slats.
As soon as I did, I realized that I had a maker's
trifecta win in my hands: easily worked hardwood,
prefinished and free.

First I built a new box for our kitchen plastic wrap,
then my daughter wanted some doll furniture. Next
was a laminated beam to repair our baby stroller,
and a few slats to serve as drawer dividers for the
clothes dresser I'd built ages ago but never quite
finished. But the piece de resistance was a set of
archery bows that I whipped up to the delight of the
neighborhood kids.
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Chatter Telephone

Chatter Telephone
Surprise! A classic pull-toy phone that realy works
Frank E. Yost | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 3 pgs | 2 mb

I remember making pretend phone calls on my
Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone when I was 7 or 8,
and wondering if it was possible to turn it into a
real phone. That question stayed with me, and when
I saw a Chatter Telephone and a Crosley Princess
Telephone recently at Target, I knew the answer was
yes. I brought them home and made it work, and it
was easier than I expected.

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Twinkle Toes

Twinkle Toes
Add a flashing, tricolor UFO to your roller skates
Dan Bassak | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 4 pgs | 2 mb

Skatetown is our local roller rink in Bloomsburg, Pa.
For years, it's also been my artistic LED experiment
laboratory. I started by taping single-color LEDs to
skates. They were so popular that one session on
the floor looked like a swarm of fireflies.

My latest LED invention is the UFO Toe Stop. It
uses a disk-shaped "flying saucer" unit that con-
tains a red, green, and blue (RGB) LED. I wanted to
blend the colors in interesting ways, so I wired it to
a PIC-controlled RGB microcontroller that comes
with programmed routines such as fixed colors,
fast-changing rainbows, or dazzling strobe effects.

I also used some translucent jam plugs (small
bolt covers used in skate dancing) that I bought in
the rink's pro shop as light diffusers.
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Remote Volume Knob

Remote Volume Knob
Paulo Rebordao | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 2 pgs | 1 mb

There's nothing like hard work to get your mind
running. Having to get up from the couch to adjust
the volume on my old stereo amp several times
each night got me thinking. I didn't want to buy
a new stereo, so I came up with a plug-in remote
volume controller that you can easily adapt to
anything with a reasonable-sized volume knob.

My circuit uses a Picaxe-08M microcontroller,
which is programmable in BASIC, and a TSOP2238
infrared receiver, which sees signals from any
Sony (or compatible) TV remote. The removable
device hangs off the volume knob, attached with
velcro.

At the top, an R/C servomotor turns the knob
through about 180° of travel, which should be
enough range for most environments. At the
bottom, 3 AA batteries act as a "keel," weighing
that end down so that the knob is forced to turn.
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G-Meter and Altimeter

G-Meter and Altimeter
Double-duty aerospace instrument on a shoestring budget
David Simpson | Make Vol. 16- 2008 | Pdf | 4 pgs | 2 mb

Here's an aerospace instrument you can build for
$5 that will measure the crushing forces that a
model rocket withstands and the rarified strata it
attains. It isn't exactly six-sigma technology in
terms of accuracy, but it's darn fun.

The device, which you install in the rocket's
payload compartment, uses 2 small bands of
heat-shrink tubing that slide over a dowel to record
the maximum G-force and altitude attained. As
the rocket accelerates, the G-force band is pushed
down by washers on a spring, and as the rocket
rises, the altitude band is pushed down the rod by
the expansion of a pressure chamber made from a
pill bottle and a rubber-balloon membrane.
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